"Don't Look Back in Anger" is a song by the English rock band Oasis, released on 19 February 1996 by Creation Records as the fifth single from their second studio album, (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995). "Don't Look Back in Anger" was written by the lead guitarist and chief songwriter, Noel Gallagher, and produced by Gallagher and Owen Morris. It was the first Oasis single with lead vocals by Noel, who had previously only sung lead on B-sides, instead of his brother, Liam. Noel later sang lead vocals on six other singles.
The single was the second Oasis song to reach number one on the UK singles chart, and it was certified seven times platinum in the UK. The music video was directed by Nigel Dick, featuring Oasis performing at a mansion with a large group of women. Critically, the song received positive reviews. It is one of Oasis's signature songs and has been played at almost every live show. In later decades, it has been included in retrospective rankings of best songs, and has been described as an "anthem" by critics in various contexts.
Background and writing In a 2019 Esquire interview, Noel Gallagher said, "I remember writing it in Paris on a rainy night. We had just played a strip club: our set finished, the strippers came on. We were nothing, an insignificant little band. And I remember going back to my hotel room and writing it, and thinking, 'That'll be pretty good when we record it.' If I'd have known that night what I know now about people playing it at fucking funerals and weddings, I'd never have finished the song. Too much pressure."
In August 2007, Gallagher told Uncut, "We were in Paris playing with the Verve, and I had the chords for that song and started writing it. We were due to play two days later. Our first-ever big arena gig, it's called Sheffield Arena now. At the sound check, I was strumming away on the acoustic guitar, and [Liam] said, 'What's that you're singin'?' I wasn't singing anyway, I was just making it up. And [Liam] said, 'Are you singing, "So Sally can wait"?' And I was like—that's genius! So I started singing, 'So Sally can wait.' I remember going back to the dressing room and writing it out. It all came really quickly after that. (The title) just popped out." The title is a combination of David Bowie's 1979 song "Look Back in Anger" and the 1967 Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back. It is also a reference to John Osborne's 1956 play Look Back in Anger, which explores themes of empty gestures and moral surrender.
First performance
Gallagher was so excited about the potential of the song that he used an acoustic set to perform the unfinished version, with differences in the arrangement and with a few slight lyrical changes, at an Oasis concert at Sheffield Arena on Saturday, 22 April 1995. Before he performed, Noel told the 12,000-member crowd: "I'm gonna play a brand new one – I only wrote it on Tuesday! No one's heard this before." He then noted, "I haven't got a title for it yet either" as he began to play.
Recording The song was recorded at Rockfield Studios as part of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? in May–June 1995. Several days of recording had already taken place at the studio. After playing "Wonderwall" and "Don't Look Back in Anger" to Liam, Noel asked him which one he wanted to sing on. Studio engineer Nick Brine recalled: "Noel was going to sing 'Wonderwall', then Liam was going to sing 'Wonderwall', then Noel said OK I'll sing 'Don't Look in Anger' and then Liam wanted to sing 'Don't Look Back In Anger' - there was a debate as to who was going to sing what."
Eventually, Liam chose "Wonderwall", which was recorded without problems. When it came time to record "Don't Look Back in Anger", 'Liam felt redundant and went to the local pub at Monmouth. Later, he returned with a crowd of around 30 drunken 'friends' who disrupted the session. Alan McGee, the boss of Creation Records described it as "half of fucking Monmouth" in the room, and "complete strangers playing with £30,000 worth of guitars". He continued: "one of them asks for the number of a cab and Noel kicks them out. A punch-up ensues, and Noel chases Liam out with a cricket bat." Oasis' photographer, Michael Spencer Jones described the situation as "A Victorian fistfight on Rockfield's lawn ... It was chaos and the scene of devastation in Liam's room afterwards was like nothing I'd ever seen ... It was like a nuclear explosion had gone off." He further said: "the band quickly disappeared - and everyone was thinking 'is that it? is it over? Producer Owen Morris recalled: "The next morning, Noel had left. The band was over. The album dead. No one knew if he was coming back. We were all gutted."
Three weeks after the fight, Noel returned, and the band finished the song and the album on schedule. Studio owner Kingsley Ward said of the incident, "We rang the record company and they said 'we thought they'd been banned' ... We didn't care less. They're lovely boys. They came back, paid the damage about 800 quid, apologised and went in that studio and did one of the greatest records in the world afterwards. It showed this band had something going for them."
Lyrics The opening line "Slip inside the eye of your mind" is a likely reference to the English rock band Small Faces' song "My Mind's Eye". Gallagher said some lines were taken from John Lennon: "I got this tape in the United States that had apparently been burgled from the Dakota Hotel and someone had found these cassettes. Lennon was starting to record his memoirs on tape. He's going on about 'trying to start a revolution from me [sic] bed, because they said the brains I had went to my head.' I thought, 'Thank you, I'll take that! The line "revolution from me bed" refers to Lennon's notorious bed-ins in 1969 as Gallagher was reading Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties published in 1994.
In a September 1995 interview, before the song was released, Gallagher explained that the lines "Stand up beside the fireplace/Take that look from off your face" were from when his mother Peggy used to say something similar when she lined the three boys up for their annual Christmas photo to send to their grandmother in Ireland. In a later interview, Noel recalled that he vividly remembered her saying, "Take that stupid look off your face".
Meaning In 1995, Gallagher said, "It's about not being upset about the things you might have said or done yesterday, which is quite appropriate at the moment. It's about looking forward rather than looking back. I hate people who look back on the past or talk about what might have been." In a 2018 interview with WXPN, Gallagher explained: "It started off as a song of defiance, about this woman: She's metaphorically seeing the diary of her life pass by, and she's thinking, 'You know what? I have no regrets.' She's raising a glass to it."
In 2005, Gallagher said that he was so high on drugs when he created the song that he had no idea what the lyrics were about: "I get the odd night when I'm halfway through "Don't Look Back in Anger" when I say to myself. 'I still don't know what these words mean! This sentiment has also been echoed by journalists. In 2024, Dominic Green of the Washington Examiner described the lyrics as "passionate but almost meaningless", while Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian said in 2008 "[the song is] loaded with emotional meaning, and yet virtually meaningless in [itself]...(why is Sally waiting, who exactly is looking back in anger?)"
Sally Of the character "Sally" referred to in the song, Gallagher commented, "I don't actually know anybody called Sally. It's just a word that fit, y'know, might as well throw a girl's name in there." Gallagher said that the character "Lyla", from Oasis's 2005 single, is Sally's sister. In the interview on the DVD released with the special edition of Stop the Clocks, he also revealed that a girl approached him and asked him if Sally was the same girl mentioned on the Stone Roses song "Sally Cinnamon". Gallagher did not have the heart to tell her that it was not, but he said he wished he had thought of that first.
Composition and structure
The piano in the introduction of the song strongly resembles Lennon's "Imagine". As Oasis are often criticised for borrowing parts of other artists' songs, Gallagher commented on the intro's similarity to "Imagine":
In an interview with Q in 1997, Gallagher said he took the main riff from David Bowie's "All the Young Dudes", saying: "Absolutely. Course. I've had two songs out of that now: 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and 'Stand by Me'. And he's still not sued me yet." Many commentators have noted that the song uses Johann Pachelbel's 17th-century "Canon in D" chord progression throughout, with a slight variation in the final bar. The chord progression of "Canon in D" is the following: I, V, vi, iii, IV, I, IV, V, while "Don't Look Back in Anger" is the following: I, V, vi, iii, IV, V – omitting the I and IV from the second bar.
As part of his What Makes This Song Great? series, Youtuber, musician, and producer Rick Beato notes in his video about "Don't Look Back in Anger" (around 4:40) how Gallagher finishes particular phrases in the song—an initial rising tone before falling off towards the end—for the words "mind", "find", and "play" in the first verse, which he describes as "caps". He explains, "if it didn't have those, it wouldn't sound like each individual phrase had come to an end, it's like a little concluding, it's the punctuation that finishes each phrase." He again notes the style for the words "been" and "seen". Beato also notes that the vocal melody of "All the Young Dudes" in Bowie's song of the same name is also appropriated using guitar in the chorus and outro of "Don't Look Back in Anger". NME noted the solo is taken from Primal Scream's "Damaged", which was itself heavily inspired by 1960s Rolling Stones recordings.
In the early 1990s, Gallagher had been invited to record with Paul Weller at The Manor Studio in Oxford, to perform on his track "I Walk on Gilded Splinters". Gallagher said of his time there: "He played me his song, 'Wings of Speed', and that was the feel I tried to get on 'Don't Look Back in Anger. Gallagher has also said of the song, "It reminds me of a cross between "All the Young Dudes" and something the Beatles might have done." Musician, historian, and cultural researcher Ari Katorza described the song as a "surrealist dream-like song with Beatlesque diatonic descending chords sequences".
"Mystery chord" Over many years, a chord in the pre-chorus of the song was a source of debate as multiple sources provided different interpretations of the chord. The chord in question comes after Noel Gallagher strikes a G Major during the line "Stand up beside the fireplace". The following line, where Gallagher sings "Take that look from off your face" is described as a G# diminished in the official Oasis songbook, but was challenged by critics as lacking the dissonance of the chord played in the recording. On 7 June 2023, Gallagher appeared on a video with That Pedal Show on YouTube, which featured him playing the song. Guitarist and YouTuber Chris Buck posted a video three days after That Pedal Shows video, in which he analyses Gallagher's fingering of the chord, confirming "It's an E dominant 7 with a G# in the bass", which is written as E7/G#. Buck also commented that the official G# dim never sounded totally right to his ears.
Cover art and release